Are Indian Software Developers “Code Donkeys”?

The recent 40th StackOverflow podcast with Michael Lopp had some pretty harsh words for Indian software programmers and the outsourcing industry in general. The transcript is incomplete, so you have to hear the podcast, but what I heard went something along these lines (not exact words)

The cost of an Indian developer is one-third the value of the cost of a developer in the United States. People assume it is because of the lower cost of living in India. But that is not why. It is because the value is one-third. If they produced the same quality of code, they would be charging the same amount.

To be fair, Joel did say that this had nothing to do with India in particular, but seemed to indicate that the problem was common with outsourcing in general. Anyway, his words pale in comparison with this comment from someone named Abdu (emphasis mine):

In the topic of outsourcing and non US shrink wrapped software.

Developers from Eastern Europe, Russia and Israel produce software which is innovative. Software that make me ponder “How did they do that?” or ” I wish I can peek at the source code”. These are code crafters and masters.

Developers from India, sorry to say, are what I call “Code Donkeys”. They do crud, boring, repetitive nothing innovative business applications and in many occasions they need blue prints and directions on how to start. I have never seen any shrinkwrap software made in India.

I have been outsourcing some of my personal programming needs to developers from Eastern Europe, Latin America and India. The ones from India give me the hardest time. They might be the cheapest but that also could very well mean low quality!

A few comments on this (FYI, I live in New Hampshire in the United States):

1. It is true that product development has been slow in India (see my previous take in 2007), but that is rapidly changing. Take a look at some of the Indian software startups. One of the best non-business software products out there is Zoho by AdventNet, which is run by Sridhar Vembu with 600+ people in Chennai, India.
2. There are and will be poor software practitioners. But this is just as true of software companies in the United States as in India. I cannot tell you how many countless times I have talked to customers here in the States where their developers have no clue how to write good software. They have decades-old legacy code. They have no idea about the latest technology developments. No processes, no documentation. In some instances, I have been burnt by having to wait for some developer to write some proper code that we could have done ourselves, just because the developer controlled that code.
3. The best talent in India go to either engineering (read computer science) or medical courses. The engineering colleges in India, especially the IITs, produce excellent students. Definitely, there will be some companies that have poor developers, but that is a problem with selecting the right company, not with Indian outsourcing in general. Secondly, many experienced Indian developers who have worked in the United States have returned to India and are working in Indian firms.
4. As with every product, if it is too cheap, it is probably not worth it. Find professional outsourcing companies in India who hire good developers and have well-defined processes. They may be more expensive than the freelance developers, but still overall less expensive. To give an analogy, compare it with buying a watch from a peddler on the street and buying it from *any* shop. And yes, Joel, the cost of living is way below what you can imagine. And higher education is heavily subsidized, so students do not come out of college with huge student debts.
5. You need a dedicated manager to work with an outsourced developer or team (whether it is Wisconsin or Bulgaria or India or the Philippines). Every team (onsite or remote) needs information and feedback to produce good software. When your team is onsite, you spend significant amount of time without realizing it. When it is offshore, suddenly every interaction is more visible in terms of demands on your team, especially with time zone issues. To compare apples to apples, account for every minute of your interaction with your onsite site and then see how the team would perform without you spending that time.

To understand the math here, many companies hire outsourcing companies and expect that costs will be reduced. But here are some important rules of outsourcing economics:

• Costs will be higher initially because of knowledge transfer and cultural handshaking between the two sides. By “culture”, I mean organizational culture (processes, standards, communication, etc.), not Indian vs. US culture, although that can be a factor too.
• You won’t save money hiring 1 or 2 developers because of the overhead of communication. To make huge gains, outsource several developers and hire people in the United States to manage them. Also plan for visits to and from India.
• Hence, you need a larger team to save money and a larger team needs dedicated onsite managers. Why dedicated? Because it is very easy for a part-time manager to be dragged more into other work and neglect his outsourcing responsibilities, since the team is not around to demand his attention.

Finally, let’s look at the evidence. There are many multi-national corporations (Microsoft, Oracle, HP, etc.) who are outsourcing large amounts of work outside the United States. Maybe they are all crazy, spending more money on low-quality programmers. I don’t know. You tell me.